Skid row: Activists consider their options after neighborhood council bid fails.
Activists who sought the creation of a new neighborhood council say their only option left is to file a lawsuit.
Los Angeles officials have certified the results of an April election that rejected efforts to form a skid row neighborhood council.
Activists in the epicenter of the city’s homelessness, who were seeking to break away from the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, had challenged the voting. They accused the larger council of using a “front group” to campaign illegally against the secession bid — and a three-member panel recommended an investigation and new election.
But the city’s Department of Neighborhood Empowerment tossed out that recommendation Friday.
A letter signed by general manager Grayce Liu said that even if the challenges were upheld, “there was no factual basis to determine that ... [they] would have made a difference in the final election results.”
The letter said the skid row backers could submit a new petition for a separate neighborhood council in 2018.
Resident Tom Grode, one of the effort’s organizers, called the decision outrageous. Noting that the threemember panel had been made up of neighborhood council officers from around Los Angeles, Grode said the department “not only rejected skid row; it rejected the city.”
“What’s the point of having a review panel if you’re not going to honor what comes out of it?” said General Jeff Page, who led the skid row secession effort. The city, he said, had left backers with no choice but to sue to overturn the election results.
Downtown council President Patti Berman has said that her group had nothing to do with the campaign in which a group called Unite DTLA used the council’s logo, database and server to send emails urging a “no” vote.
“No one would like to find out more than me who’s responsible for this,” Berman said at the election challenge hearing earlier this month. She was unavailable for comment Friday.
Skid row organizers have argued that the 50-block neighborhood has been neglected as the rest of downtown has boomed. A separate council would help its 10,000 residents get what they need: showers, bathroom access, 24-hour cleanups, family housing, parks and other amenities.
Opponents of the secession effort counter that the central city is stronger if it speaks with one voice. They back more housing for working people and stepped-up policing to lift skid row out of its squalor.